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Does Race Determine Which Princess You Can Dress As?

Halloween is just around the corner. Did anyone go to any fun Halloween parties this weekend? Who's your favorite princess to cosplay as? Halloween is the one time of year that people can pretend to be someone else and to look and feel different from their everyday life. I dressed up as Emma Swan from Once Upon a Time this year. For me, Emma is a makes me feel empowered because she is more assertive than I am and has survived through many hardships in her past. It's fun to dress up in unique costumes once a year, especially if you've always wished you could be a princess. Recently, certain articles have been popping up on social media claiming that dressing as a princess who is a different race than you or your child is "cultural appropriation" and therefore wrong. As you can probably guess, I am of the dissenting opinion on this not only because I think kids should be able to dress as whatever they want for Halloween, but also because I believe that it goes against everything that princesses stand for.

Pictured above is a screenshot from an episode of Elena of Avalor that aired a few months ago called "My Fair Naomi." In this episode, Elena's friend Naomi, who happens to be white, reveals that she has never had a birthday party because her parents were always away on voyages at sea. As a result, Elena and her cousin Esteban decide to throw Naomi a quinceañera for her next birthday. For those unfamiliar with the term, a quinceañera is a big coming-of-age ceremony for Latina girls celebrating their 15th birthday. It's very princess-like, complete with ballgowns, tulle, tiaras, and glitter. Naomi points out that because she isn't Avaloran (the show's equivalent to Latina), she can't partake in the tradition. Elena, however, insists on throwing her one anyway because Naomi lives in Avalor now. Is this cultural appropriation? Why didn't we get a bunch of angry articles after this episode aired about Disney portraying a white girl partaking in a beloved Latina tradition? Was Naomi offending her Latina friends by letting them allow her to partake in their tradition?

I can't read minds, but my theory is that since Elena of Avalor is a show on Disney Junior that parents can plop their kids in front of while they go in the next room, they probably don't pay as much attention to it as they would a Hollywood blockbuster like Moana. Parents seem to know very little about the princesses they are telling their children they can't dress up as. Take this article on on raceconscious.org for example. The author claims that her daughter "demanded" her to take her to see Frozen and Moana and promptly decided she wanted to be Elsa for Halloween this year and Moana next year. Instead of talking to her daughter about why she felt inspired or influenced by these characters and their roles in the movie, the mother proceeded to explain that dressing as Elsa would make it look like all princesses have to be blonde and white. She tried showing her daughter a photoshopped image of Elsa she found on Google as "proof" that Elsa could have brown hair, which of course did not work because it wasn't what Elsa looked like the movie. The article goes on to explain that dressing as Moana could be construed as disrespectful to Polynesians because Moana is Polynesian and dressing as people from their culture is the same as making fun of it, even though the girl in question clearly loved the character and demonstrated no notated respect toward the culture.

The problem here is that the mother in the article does not seem to see these characters beyond their race. Instead of having a discussion about how Elsa ran away and abandoned her responsibilities and why that was wrong or how Moana wanted to be a leader like her father but saw things in a different way and what that would mean for her family and future, she instead diminished both characters to their skin and hair colors as if nothing else about them mattered. Her daughter ultimately decided to be Mickey Mouse next Halloween after being heavily lectured that dressing as Moana is wrong because she's not Polynesian. To me, this goes against everything that princesses stand for. Over the past decade, Disney has introduced more and more diversity their Disney Princess line, and until now, no one has complained about it. The Little Mermaid animated series from the '90s encouraged acceptance of those who are different than you with numerous episodes about Ariel befriending outcasts and fighting segregation prejudice. That's what the song "In Harmony" was all about. Also, have I mentioned recently what an awesome character Tiana is?

Telling a little girl that she can't pretend to be a princess she admires who has a different skin color or background than her is extremely harmful. It purveys the message that you shouldn't look past someone's appearance and encourages segregation. Seeing princesses from different cultural backgrounds coming together to share similar ideas of love and acceptance is beautiful. Just because a little girl relates better to a princess from a different culture than one from her own is not a reason to shun her. It is a reason to celebrate her open-mindedness and to continue encouraging her to for the beauty that lies within instead of judging people by their outward appearance.

Back around 2012, a friend of mine sent me a press release about how Disney was making a new princess show about a little girl from a poor village who becomes a princess overnight when her mother marries the king. The endearing image of the little girl on the press release instantly caught my attention with her unique reddish-brown curls, playful expression, and gorgeous lavender dress that was dripping with pearl accents. Something about this description and image got me so excited for the series that I got to work right away on making a grown-up sized cosplay of Sofia's elegant gown. The series premiered on Disney Junior with a TV special called Once Upon a Princess in which Sofia received her legendary Amulet of Avalor and sang about her insecurities for her future life as a princess heroine in the song "Not Ready To Be a Princess." I loved her instantly. Over the next six years, she took me on a four season-long journey filled with Disney Princesses, fairies, mermaid…

The internet has been buzzing about Kingdom Hearts III finally getting a release date after fifteen long years of anticipation. Unless it gets delayed again, we will be able to catch up with Sora, Donald, and Goofy as they travel through the realms of various Disney movies on January 29th, 2019. There have been a couple of trailers dropped over the last few days revealing footage from Frozen, Tangled, Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Hercules, and Pirates of the Caribbean. For me, the biggest announcement came from the latter half of last night's trailer in which Larxene of Organization XIII remarked that Elsa might be one of the new seven pure hearts that they needed for their latest quest. Anyone who has played the first game knows that this is a reference to the Princesses of Heart, a select group of Disney Princesses who had their chance to become video game royalty when they got captured by Maleficent in an attempt to use their pure hearts to open the Door to Darkness. My biggest pe…

We all had lots of fun playing with princess dolls as kids and brushing their hair until it became ratty and tangled. For those of us who are older, there has is the option of purchasing pricier collectible dolls that are made with finer details in their hair and clothes and come with their own stands for display purposes. While princesses have never exactly been lacking in options for collectible dolls, the Disney Princess Designer Collection that was revealed at the D23 Expo in 2011 was the start of something special. Each princess had her own designer dress that looked like it came straight off a modern-day runway. The collection was released alongside lithographs, cards, mugs, and other paraphernalia featuring beautiful matching artwork. The dolls themselves weren't sculpted from your typical Barbie mold. They had fully articulated wrist and elbow joints, salon quality hair that stayed perfectly in place, bigger painted eyes, and long realistic eyelashes that you could actuall…

In 2008, the Philippines released a mermaid princess telenovela that was based on a popular graphic novel by Mars Ravelo in 1952. Dyesebel is loosely based on the story of "The Little Mermaid" with a few distinct differences. It was Dyesebel's mother, Queen Lucia, who first fell in love with a human and left the underwater world of Sirenea to be with him, sacrificing her memories of her life as a mermaid in the process. Dyesebel was born on land, but because of her tail, her mother returned her to the sea, entrusting her to her best friend, Banak, to raise her. Her human father, Tino, was murdered by humans who believed that mermaids were bad luck. Unaware of the circumstances of her birth, Dyesebel grew up curious about the human world until one day, she fell in love with a human and was doomed to follow in her mother's footsteps. The 2008 adaptation of Dyesebel is performed in the native Filipino language, Tagalog, but I was able to watch it with English subtitles …

If you're one of the five people on Earth who still hasn't seen the new Wreck-It Ralph 2 trailer that dropped this morning, I'm here to break it down for you. The trailer featured roughly the first half of a scene in which all of the living voice actresses for the Disney Princesses reprised their roles as Vanellope snuck into their secret internet headquarters that was presented at the D23 Expo last year. A screenshot released last week previewed the scene with Ariel missing, but now we see that she was just off-screen combing her hair with her favorite dinglehopper in a blinged out version of pink tea dress along with lots more animation of other the princesses in their oddly disproportionate new CGI style animation. Let's take a look.

For starters, it's a bit odd how Ariel and Cinderella have swapped the levels of bling on their ballgowns. In the 1950 animated movie, Cinderella's dress appeared to have made from a lightweight silvery-white fabric emblazoned w…

The internet went a little crazy when Entertainment Weekly released Disney's first promo photos of the fully costumed actors from their upcoming Aladdin remake last week. Many were disappointed with what they saw, which unfortunately tends to be the case for live-action remakes. For instance, Aladdin's signature purple vest was changed to red, making it closer to the Broadway version of the show. He was also given a relatively nice shirt underneath, which is more than a little confusing for those of us who remember how poor he was in the original film. Will Smith as the Genie looked a little too much like a normal human instead of a mystical blue entity, but apparently that's still coming. Princess fans were most excited to see previews of Jasmine's wardrobe. In terms of quantity, the internet did not disappoint. We now have images of three of Jasmine's looks that will be featured in the movie as well as a peek at her new handmaiden.

In my "Little Mermaid" origins post, I mentioned that there were three live-action movies in the works based on the beloved Hans Christian Andersen tale. Since then, a few announcements have been made about all three of these movies. One of them has a theatrical release date, and it's sooner than you might think. The circus-themed indie movie that's had a trailer out for several years now is coming to select AMC theaters on August 17th. That's in two months! I wish I could be more excited about it, but the plot looks a lot closer to the 2006 tongue-in-cheek teen mermaid movie Aquamarine than the fairy tale that it's named after. The trailer focuses on how a little girl's belief in mermaids has the potential to save the aquatic heroine who is held captive in a tank at a carnival. I've been feeling indifferent about this adaptation ever since the first trailer was released, but it's nice to know that I will have the option to see it on the big scree…

Sofia the First, everyone's favorite princess-in-training, has met every official Disney Princess that existed when her show began with the sole exception of Pocahontas. The power of her purple amulet granted her the ability to summon famous princesses whenever she was in trouble. Technically, she never met Anna either, but the episode "Olaf and the Tale of Miss Nettle" implied that she was supposed to meet her but got Olaf instead because her amulet was on the fritz. About a year ago, her amulet turned pink and granted her new powers. It now sends her to help princesses, meaning that the chances of her meeting Pocahontas at this point are virtually nonexistent. Why did they acknowledge every other princess movie except this one? Actually, they did acknowledge the 1995 animated classic in an episode of Sofia, but it was very subtle.

In the 2015 episode of Sofia the First, "The Secret Library," Sofia discovers a hidden passageway beneath her castle where a boat …